I can do something regularly for a month, and I am
way more motivated to give it a good go than think to myself “well, today’s the first day of a new thing that I want to do, and I’m going to do it
every day for the rest of my life.

(Easy example is right now I’m publishing something every day. For a month. I’m about half way through. No way I would be motivated to stick with this for a year, or the rest of my life)

Failure to keep a goal provides valuable insight

If most Americans have a New Years resolution, you can be sure that most of
those Americans then guilt themselves some time later about not actually completing the resolutions.

They shouldn’t. We have a powerful sense of inertia in our life, and this keeps us powering through the day-to-day without any major problems. It’s a
good thing that we can’t rewrite our habits quickly or easily. It’s just also a frustrating thing.

Plan on failing. Since failure provides information, don’t beat yourself up over it, just regroup, re-evaluate, and give it another go.

Time-boxing lets you (makes you?) decide where you want to be in a month

I’ve been trying to learn French recently, and trying to improve my Spanish. It’s not plausible to do these simultaneously, and “improve my {language}” is a
terrible goal.

So, today, I told my French-speaking language buddy I needed to postpone our next session by a month, so I could spend time on Spanish. Then, in a month, I’ll take a few days of a “break”, and move back into French mode.

This makes me feel
very motivated to make progress in Spanish, because I’m “time boxed”, and once this month is through, it’ll be at least another six weeks before I practice my Spanish again.

So, I’m going to work on Spanish for 30 days. Coming soon is “How I find native Spanish speakers to practice with.” (It has nothing to do with being in a Spanish speaking country)